Ahmad Sa’adat transferred to isolation in Asqelan prison

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat. Ahmad Sa’adat is a Palestinian political prisoner and the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He is being held by the Israeli authorities. Fight Back!’s 2003 interview with Ahmad Sa’adat can be read at: http://www.fightbacknews.org/2003-3-summer/pflp.htm

Ahmad Sa’adat transferred to isolation in Asqelan prison!

On March 19, 2009, Ahmad Sa’adat was suddenly transferred from Hadarim prison to Asqelan prison, where he is being held in solitary confinement.

Ahmad Sa’adat, alongside 11,000 other Palestinian prisoners, has been repeatedly subjected to solitary confinement and punitive measures at the behest of the Israeli regime. Sa’adat has been moved repeatedly from prison to prison ,and often placed in solitary confinement or isolation.

Palestinian lawyer Buthaina Duqmaq, president of the Mandela Association for Palestinian prisoners, stated that this is part of the Israeli policies towards Palestinian prisoners. Sa’adat has been particularly targeted because he is both a Palestinian national leader and a leader among the prisoners, whose presence within the prison strengthens the prisoners’ unity and steadfastness.

Furthermore, Ahmad Sa’adat is suffering from back injuries that require medical assistance and treatment. Instead of receiving the medical care he needs, the Israeli prison officials are refusing him access to specialists and engaging in medical neglect and maltreatment. Now, they are returning him to isolation where he will face even more serious medical neglect and injury.

The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat demands an end to this isolation and calls upon all to write to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations to exercise their responsibilities and act swiftly to demand that the Israelis ensure that Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners receive needed medical care and that this punitive isolation be ended. Email the ICRC, whose humanitarian mission includes monitoring the conditions of prisoners, at jerusalem.jer@icrc.org, and inform them about the urgent situation of Ahmad Sa’adat!

The imprisonment of Sa’adat, facing a 30 year sentence for his powerful and political leadership of the Palestinian people, is a symbol of Israel’s attempts to isolate and target the Palestinian people and their national movement for liberation, through massive imprisonment. They have not succeeded in breaking the will of the people of Palestine, through imprisonment, massacres, and siege, and will never succeed in breaking the will of Sa’adat, the Palestinian prisoners, or the Palestinian people.